Ancestral Roofs

"In Praise of Older Buildings"

Monday, January 21, 2013

Happy Bicentenarians

16 Orchard Street (before 1800)

A correspondent, whose heart is clearly with the homes of the c.18 in Maritime Canada, sends links regularly to images of venerable early homes of eastern Canada. Some are doing very well thank you...other reports are obituaries.

top, across the bay: Christian Ernst House (1765)

Today I was browsing photos of our wander round Mahone Bay a couple of years ago - yearning for a sunny summer day, for a bit of travel, for a look at some old houses.

2 comments:

Oh, God love ya. And on a cold snowy day, no less. (Mexico, where are you now ?). Its funny you bring this up b/c I was thinking about these older structures last night. A few years ago I had made a running tally (nerd alert !) of extant NS structures that predated the coming of the Loyalists. When that list approached a hundred properties, I stopped adding to it. There are more, probably, and the number of all 18th c. structures might approach 300 or more. One of my favourites is Wisteria Cottage in Chester, from the 1760's. On this property during the American Revolution, a group of women once dressed as soldiers to thwart an imminent attack from the enemy just offshore. They slung brooms over their shoulders and marched around, knowing the Americans were just far enough away to not know the difference:

Great Architecture quotes

"The sins of the Architect are permanent sins" Frank Lloyd Wright, 1914

"In the end, we conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught." ~Baba Dioum, Senegalese poet (Posted in January on the ACO Acorn online)

"It is forbidden to disfigure external decorations on private buildings through modern additions and to spoil historic buildings in an important town out of avarice and the desire to make money." - Theodosius, Valentinianus, Arcadius (309 A.D.)

"It has been said that at its best, preservation engages the past in a conversation with the present over a mutual concern for the future" - William Murtagh (1988)

"Preservationists are the only people in the world who are invariably confirmed in their wisdom after the fact". - John Kenneth Galbraith (1979)

"A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines" - Frank Lloyd Wright

"Architecture is the art of how to waste space" - Philip Johnson

"Architecture is frozen music" - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Photo Gallery

"Caught in passing"

Striker/Walmsley House 1868

Albert Street beauty

Fort William Collegiate Institute - "they don't make 'em like they used to"